The odds are strongly in favor of Hillary Clinton absolutely crushing Donald Trump in this fall’s presidential election. She leads him in polling, organization, fundraising, and in about a thousand other head to head factors.

Clinton also has the advantage of being a Democrat, the party that has excelled at presidential elections. In five out of the last six presidential contests, the Democratic nominee has received a plurality of the votes and outright electoral and popular vote majorities in the two most recent contests. As a Democrat, Clinton is likely to immediately win a majority of states with the most electoral votes. This includes California, New York and Illinois. Her party has also tended to win four out of the five states with the largest electoral college haul.

Clinton will be campaigning with a president with an approval rating over 51%, while none of Trump’s predecessors for the Republican nominee will probably campaign with him, and the most recent nominee actively opposes him. If George W. Bush did campaign with Trump, he would probably be hurt by the exercise, not helped.

It is against this backdrop of dominance that I encounter, on a daily basis, liberals who are constantly wetting the bed.

Frankly, I don’t understand it.

It isn’t that I’m saying Clinton can’t possibly lose. But a dispassionate look at recent history, the state of the campaign, and Donald Trump’s unique positioning as someone directly opposed to the base values of the Democratic Party and its voters does not bode well for his chances.

There isn’t anything wrong with acknowledging this, saying it, and taking it as your dominant attitude heading into the election.

When Michael Jordan was at the height of his basketball prowess, he didn’t go into the NBA Finals telling his teammates they “might” win or that he “hoped” it would work out. He went into those games knowing he was the best basketball – perhaps even athlete – in the entire known world. And then he performed up to that level of expectation.

When the allies landed on the beaches of Normandy in World War II, despite the war juggernaut Hitler had demonstrated thus far, they didn’t say they “hoped” the D-Day landing would work, nor did they hedge, hem, and haw about the mission at hand – smashing the Nazi machine. They went in, knowing that they would win and would prevail, because they had to.

There isn’t any serious person on the left that thinks about the task against Trump as “in the bag,” to the point where they aren’t ready to show up on November 8, 2016, with anything less than the intention to beat Donald Trump’s rear end from coast to coast.

We know he’s a misogynist who is appealing to the worst racist and fascist elements in America in a way we haven’t seen this blatantly in decades. We’re well aware of the downside of a Trump victory, and there isn’t anyone with an ounce of seriousness on the left who thinks that huge issues aren’t at stake – choice, the Supreme Court, health care, immigration, national security – and on and on.

But we also know that the likelihood of victory is on our side, and we should stop acting like a gaggle of Eeyores, constantly beating ourselves up and rending garments like we’re down by 20 percentage points.

In reality we’re far closer to being on the winning side of an epic landslide that metaphorically punches hate, racism, misogyny, ignorance and a million other qualities emblematic of the worst of America right in its stupid face.

And we should act like it.

Act like a winner, and be a winner. Don’t act like a loser when you’re winning.